The skin is often referred to as the largest organ of the human body. It surrounds the body and acts as a barrier to organisms which might cause infection. Human skin is innervated and is very sensitive to external stimuli.
Skin can be damaged in several ways. It can be abraded, burned, cut, surgically removed, etc. Damaged skin is very painful. In order to treat damaged skin, it may be necessary to implant a skin graft which, while healing, the healthy area surrounding donor and recipient sites of grafted skin can be very painful and sensitive to external stimuli for several months.
Touching grafted or otherwise damaged skin with the hand or a foreign object elicits a pain response. Even a bed sheet coming into contact with damaged or grafted skin can be very painful to a burn patient convalescing in bed.
Ventilation may be helpful in treating damaged skin. The air helps to keep the damaged skin cool, and feels refreshing to the patient.
Heretofore, methods for keeping foreign objects from contacting damaged skin have consisted of either wrapping the damaged area with gauze or cloth, or applying an artificial membrane to the damaged area.
Typical of the artificial membrane protective covers are Band-Aid.RTM. bandages. This type of bandage is adequate for protecting relatively small areas of skin, but the bandages are too small to cover larger areas adequately. These bandages consist of a non-adhesive and generally absorbent area, surrounded on at least two sides with adhesive areas. The absorbent area is placed over the damaged skin, while the adhesive areas are preferably placed on the surrounding healthy tissue. Bandages and dressings of this type are unsuitable for sensitive graft sites which cannot tolerate physical contact. Furthermore, ventilation through gauze dressings and bandages is limited.
Woodruff Laboratories, Inc. of Santa Ana, Calif., markets a biosynthetic temporary wound dressing under the trademark Biobrane.RTM.. The dressing is adherent and flexible, and is a biocomposite of a thin semipermeable silicone membrane mechanically bonded to a flexible knitted nylon fabric. Biobrane.RTM. suffers the same disadvantages of other skin protection mechanisms, i.e., it does not prevent painful pressure application to the damaged area of the skin, does not allow sufficient ventilation to the damaged area, and does not allow the spray application of antiseptic or anesthetic products without removal of the mechanism. There remains a need for an apparatus with these features which is adaptable to a variety of specific emergency and outpatient applications.